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One shibboleth of much of the Religious Right is the notion that sexual orientation is a choice. If that was the case, I think it would be probable human beings would not be involuntarily influenced as the subjects in the study cited below were. The study would seem to indicate that human beings have only limited control over what they as individuals find sexually attractive.

"Erotic Images Entice Even When Invisible," by Ker Than of LiveScience.com, October 24, 2006:

The use of scantily clad models in ads for everything from underwear to ice cream attest to the persuasive power of sex, but a surprising new study finds that our actions can be swayed by erotic images even when they don't consciously register in our awareness.

In an experiment, 40 men and women were shown erotic images that had been manipulated to bypass conscious detection. The participants consisted of both heterosexual and homosexual individuals.

Subjects were then shown a small "probe" pattern and asked to determine its orientation—clockwise or counterclockwise. The researchers found that subjects identified the probe pattern more accurately when it appeared where the erotic images had been, suggesting that the invisible images exerted an effect on their spatial attentions.

In general, the erotic images attracted or repelled attention depending on the gender of the nude model and also the sexual orientation of the subject. For example, heterosexual males tended to perform better on the pattern task when it followed the presentation of an invisible female nude than a male nude. Gay males, in contrast, showed more enhanced performance when exposed to invisible male nudes compared to female nudes.

"We didn't predict that," study team member Sheng He of the University of Minnesota told LiveScience. "We just wanted to see if invisible images can attract your attention or not.".....The finding is detailed online in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The New York Timeshad an interesting article
yesterday about a move by American bishops to draft "new guidelines for ministry to gay people that affirm church
teaching against same-sex relationships, marriages and adoptions by gay
couples, yet encourage parishes to reach out to gay Catholics who feel
alienated by their church."

Hmm, can anyone guess why gays
and lesbians feel alienated by their church? Maybe it has something to
do with the fact that the Church teaches against same-sex
relationships, marriages and adoptions by gay couples.

At this point in American history, wherever one finds the political rightwing, one of course finds the Religious Right, and vice versa.

That's why I draw your attention to the People For the American Way (PFAW) weblog, Right Wing Watch. It also features great information on topics related to the Religious Right, including the self-proclaimed Patriot Pastors and Justice Sunday.

A nonprofit group has filed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the role that two churches may have played in the re-election campaign of Kansas’ attorney general.

The complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan legal watchdog organization, cited a memorandum from the attorney general, Phill Kline, a Republican, directing members of his campaign staff to recruit churches to distribute campaign literature and serve as the sites for events.

“This is the top law enforcement official in the state who is encouraging everyone to break the law,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group. “He’s either abysmally unfamiliar with the law, or he’s deliberately violating it.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Kline, Sherriene Jones, did not return calls to her office.

In his memorandum, Mr. Kline identified two Topeka churches, the Light of the World Christian Center and the Wanamaker Woods Church of the Nazarene, which he said had participated in “lit drops” by handing out campaign literature. A woman who answered the telephone at Wanamaker Woods Church said the church had no comment......Despite a report last year by the Treasury Department’s inspector general that concluded political considerations had played no role in the I.R.S.’s selection of nonprofit groups for review, the agency’s silence regarding its investigations has led to accusations of political bias.

“From what we know, the I.R.S. has gone after liberal organizations primarily, the N.A.A.C.P. and the liberal church in California,” Ms. Sloan said, referring to the inquiry into All Saints Church,[an Episcopal church in California]. An I.R.S. investigation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was closed with no finding of wrongdoing.

“Clearly, there are violations on the conservative side, and no action appears to be taken.” Ms. Sloan said. “If they’re being even-handed,” she added, “I certainly can’t tell.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also filed a complaint with the I.R.S. last week against the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minn., accusing its senior pastor of violating the law by openly stating his support for a Congressional candidate.

“We can’t publicly endorse as a church, and would not for any candidate,” the senior pastor, the Rev. Mac Hammond, told his congregation during a service on Oct. 14 as he introduced Michele Bachmann, a Republican state senator who is running for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. “But I can tell you personally that I’m going to vote for Michele Bachmann,” he said......

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation acknowledged “the Great Governor of the World,” but six years later the Constitution made no mention of God. When Hamilton was asked why, he jauntily said, “We forgot.” Ten years after the Constitutional Convention, the Senate unanimously ratified a treaty with Islamic Tripoli that declared the United States government “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

The Religious Right is the most powerful political movement in our country's history since the Civil Rights movement.

Unfortunately, the Religious Right's fortunes seem thwarted only ever through the cyclical misfortunes of the Republican Party. The movement itself--its core beliefs--are seldom ever challenged by self-proclaimed liberals (or libertarians), for fear of being "insensitive" or being misunderstood as being "anti-religion."

You can help correct this, and help stop the spread of the Religious Right's influence, even when politicians won't!

Click here to watch a short movie by the non-profit organization, DefCon, that gives just a small indication of the Religious Right's assault on science and freedom.

Author Sam Harris caused a stir with his book, THE END OF FAITH, in which he argued that there was a deep link between religion and violence. His latest, LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION, addresses the arguments readers have made in attempts to refute his claims.

The famed National History Museum in Oslo, Norway, has been targeted by local church groups over a historic exhibit, "Against Nature," believed to be the first in the world to examine the role of same-sex animal pairs.

.....Conservative Christians are accusing the museum of displaying pornography, according to Reuters. One evangelical pastor even said museum directors should burn in hell.

In his new book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, former administration official David Kuo documents top Bush political advisors ridicule of evangelical leaders. The advisors, employed in the office of Bush's right-hand man Karl Rove, described conservative Christians as "nuts" and "goofy," while recognizing their electoral importance to the Republican Party.

The book discloses more than a cynical view of the religious right by the administration. "More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly 'nonpartisan' events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races," according to a recent report on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olberman.

A revealing look at a Bush White House that has no qualms about using taxpayer money to fund a religious program with the intent to do so for political gain, all the while mocking the very people it exploits for this gain.

But could the Religious Right be waning at least relative to its influence within the Republican Party? In a recent Salon.com article, an unnamed Republican staffer on Capital Hill offers a negative assessment of the Religious Right's relationship with the Republican Party that is worth examining.

He said:

I genuinely believe that 2004 was the high-water mark for the Christian conservative role in the Republican Party. Since that time, we've seen a backing away from that, certainly on the part of, probably, both sides. .....Most Christian conservative groups are looking for ideological purity.... You build a political party by expanding it, not by contracting it, and [Republicans'] continued appeals to conservative Christians and that element of the party are only going to last and only going to work for so long.

Ultimately you're going to push so many people away that that's all you have left, a theocratic party. And if I sound like I'm being pretty critical of the Republican Party, I am, because it's something that they're going to have to realize. They're going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century one way or another.

Time will tell if this staffer is correct.

I believe that plenty of young adults nurtured in the Religious Right have had a foretaste of power and political influence, and that for some of them--since they are merely human--power or merely the political game (which many people find alluring in and of itself) will trump charity, artistic expression, wealth, or any of the dozens of other things good, bad, or neutral that might motivate them in life and steer their vocational and avocational efforts. They will stay and fight for the continued strengthening of the Religious Right's influence in the Republican Party.

For instance, consider the White House and Congressional staffers among whom Patrick Henry College students are disproportionately represented. Recently the count was 22 staffers over a 4-year period...from a college of approximately 240 kids. Some of these staffers are not just going to shrug their shoulders and walk away from the political arena. The same goes for an unknown number of the roughly 2,000,000 home-schooled kids in America, many of whom have been led to believe, in part through specialty textbooks, that the US was meant by its founders to be a Christians-first or Christian-privileging nation--a belief typified by GOP activist David Barton. For this subset of the next generation of Religious Right activists, whatever their final number ends up being, they're in the struggle for the long haul.